Why Lawyers Suck Ass, But Judges Rule (page 2) After the whole thing was laid out before us in the opening statements the lawyers began their bickering. All those really lame and gay jokes about lawyers turned out to be true! They are evil. They are annoying shitballs. They are lower than John Travolta. They were petty and pretentious whores! Whenever one would say something that might could possibly be theoretically thesibly thought of as an attack on the other's client the other attorney would jump up out of his chair like the hot-electric poker up his ass was just plugged in and he'd shout out "OBJECTION, your Honor!!!!!" This happened every 5-10 seconds of examination. After the 8th objection by the defense lawyer to the same questioning tactics of the Plaintiff's attorney the judge ordered them both to the bench for a whipping and he flipped a switch that started playing some cool jazz music in speakers above our jury box. But just as we had started to get really into it the regal scolding was over. The judge was the only one who treated us nicely. Well, him and the bailiff, but he didn't bring us donuts like the other bailiffs did for their juries. The judge would take the time to stop the arguing and questioning to tell us the straight story of what the hell was really going on (this was especially helpful since I had a tendency to fall asleep whenever the words "Objection" and "But, but, but your Honor!" were spoken... They were spoken incredibly frequently). He was one of those really old judges who didn't give a crap what anybody else thought of him or his interpretation of the courtroom. He often would simply tell the lawyers to "Shut up!" and then he'd make a joke at their expense or stick out his tongue at them. That was the funniest damn thing I'd ever seen! I would have sworn that one of the attorneys would have had the mental asylum people on hand with straight jacket in tow after lunch. The following is the only advice I can give people about jury duty: Get the fuck out of it if at all possible, unless your judge is really old and senile. Then simply sit back and enjoy the ride! Since no cameras were allowed in the courtroom I had to make this "artist's interpretation" of what the judge and bailiff looked like for most of the trial. Yes. The bailiff actually had a gun. When we were first being questioned by the lawyers I would just stare intently at it while licking my lips in the hopes that they might not want the "punk ass kid who reeeeeally wanted a handgun" on their jury. Unfortunately the Lawyer who looked like Teller thought I was studying the dude's crotch and just had to have me on board.

Eventually lunch came around and we were all allowed an hour break to eat anywhere we wanted to. The truth is an hour is not even close to enough time to find a restaurant in an unfamiliar city, get there, order and eat. The group of jurors that I went out with (including the cute redhead who it turned out was 23 years old, divorced and already engaged again to some greasy Euro-trash guy who needed a green card... but I digress) didn't know downtown too well either. We wandered for about 10 minutes and then just ended up going to Hooters. That was my choice. Our waitress was a walking silicone rock (which isn't a bad thing, unless you're trying to eat fast and run). She couldn't get our orders right and she took her sweet ass (and it was) time even getting us our drinks. During lunch though, I got to know some of the other jurors. Some of the most memorable dickheads there were the Delta pilot, the housewife (who broke her leg after falling off a 5 story parking deck [she would not tell us if she was drunk, drugged or pushed by her loving husband... I guessed "pushed" after listening to her for more than 5 minutes]), the retired bus driver chick, the pervert (NOT me), the redhead and the dude who would only stare at us in silence. They became like a second dysfunctional family away from home to me. After a relatively quick lunch (that seemed to go on for days) we ran back to our courtroom. We had three minutes to spare, but His Honor started things 2 minutes and 30 seconds early. And after just chugging a 32 ounce sweet tea I did NOT need to miss my bathroom break. I still think that my treatment in that situation was against the Geneva Convention. We, the jury, settled back in to our big chairs and began listening to the blather from both sides again. It just kept droning on and on. The judge had to call both lawyers to his bench 5 more times in the next hour and a half. I did get to hear the rest of the jazz album in the mean time though. That was cool. But after this point there were only two more insane and funny instances that I remember really well. The first occurred when the Plaintiff's attorney called a witness who used to work for a bank or something that handled the checks for the company that Mr. Soprano (the Defendant) worked for. The witness was shown lots of paperwork that she used to handle for the company and she was asked to comment about some signatures. Well, Teller and Mr. Soprano were pretty happy for a while seeing as nothing serious was coming of her testimony. Then Mr. Gore pulled out a copy of a check that had a special signature on the back. She was asked to read it out loud. But before she could Mr. Soprano's jaw dropped like the price of a cheap whore during a herpes epidemic and he (quite audibly) blurted out, "Oh shhhhhhit!" It turned out that the signature wasn't very legible though, and the copy was pretty bad so nothing really came of it... But I guess the lesson there is to always check your court microphone before you curse your case goodbye. The second funny moment came when a co-investor in the bankrupt mortgage company was called to the stand. It was some weaselly looking eye doctor guy who was friends with Mr. Roper. This man was the one who should have been suing (well, if anybody should have been). He actually lost close to $350K. That is an assload of money to blow on a shady company making shady commitments (and by the way, "shady" has become my catch-phrase-word of the month). I would have had some sympathy for the doctor had he not been a total loser. He kept getting flustered by the friendly questioning by his friend's lawyer and he could never find the right papers that he was asked to read from. So soon enough Al Gore was reading the pages over his shoulder for him. This of course prompted Teller to flip to his feet and shout out "OBJECTION, your honor!! He, he, he's, he's leading the witness!" "Sustained. Would you mind letting the little rat-faced bitch answer your questions himself, man?" I swear that this was the judge's response word for word (well, except maybe the "bitch", but that does sound right). So Al went back to asking the rodent-guy to read from the documents again and once more he began fumbling and choking on his own words. Al jumped to the occasion for the second time to read the text for the idiot eye doctor causing the defense attorney to pop up out of his seat like an erection on an embarrassed 8th grader when his hot, 28 year old fitness instructor teacher named Ms. Richardson bends down to pick up the chalk. "OBJECTION!!! Your honor....." He let the sentence trail off as he shook his hands back and forth in a rapid, questioning manner. The judge said, "Sustained." Then he faced the doctor. "Look, Dr. Snotlick, you're gunna have to read the papers yourself or get the hell off the stand." The doctor replied, "B-b-b-b-but, Your Honor.... I-i-i-i-it's all so confusing and all and-and-and I'm not a lawyer or anything..." The judge then stared him down and barked, "Well I'm not an optometrist myself, but I got two eyes! So just read the damn article and get on with it!" He stuck out his tongue at the cowering loser and just kicked back while crossing his feet up on the table in front of him. The doctor just kept stuttering so much that His Honor lost patience and just closed court for the day. We were sent home but ordered to return by 8:15AM the next morning. I wanted to kick a lawyer (or an optometrist) in the nuts after that.

Sooooooo, after little beauty sleep that night I woke up at 2 in the morning to make it downtown again before the assigned hour. I waited in the jury room with the twelve other human excrements on the jury. We waited and waited and waited and waited. I last looked at my watch at 9:45. The bailiff kept coming in to tell us to be patient and that things might end up better than we thought. We asked if a car bomb took out one or more of the lawyers and he said no, the news wasn't that good. A few minutes later we were summoned and ready to dish out the death penalty (to whom it did not matter), but we were stopped short when we saw the judge in a Hawaiian coconut T-shirt sitting on the bench without his robe. Well, to make an already motherfuckingly long story short, the lawyers had "come to an undisclosed settlement" and the case was closed. Those bastard sons of bitches just used us like bloody tampons!! The jury was only there for show!!! Holy cow fuck I wanted to tire-iron them to sleep with the fishes!!!! The little redhaired girl engaged to the greasy foreign piece of shit summed it up best when she muttered under her breath, "I feel more screwed and violated than a prostitute with ten vaginas hired by a horny octopus..." I don't think she did the math for the number of tentacles per violated vaginas, but the point was well made. On the way out of the court room I flicked off Mr. Roper and Al Gore, but I made it look like I was rubbing my eye. On the right you can see another artist's interpretation of a scene in the courtroom when it was revealed to the jury that the Defendant and Plaintiff had settled out of court. That's me jumping out of the jury box with my adamantium claws unsheathed in berserker rage. I'm jumping at Mr. Soprano (left) and Mr. Roper (right). And yes, Mr. roper does have the "Seal of the Triforce" on his left hand. In the end, yes, I was royally pissed. I had wasted a day and a half of my precious life so that some dumb jackass who can't really handle his money could make a few thousand bucks off of another dumb schmuck whom he may have/may not have actually done business with a few years ago. But in the end I guess it was worth it. Not only because I had the rest of the second day off to hit the "Kitty Kat Room" and see Eliza the Enchantress again, but I got paid some serious mad money. The state of Georgia actually paid me $50 bucks to sit on my butt and flirt with unavailable redheads! God bless America! Of course I blew the money in under an hour, but it was worth it I guess. EDITOR's Notes: Screw the Rossman! Last time I had jury duty I got a case that lasted 21/2 weeks! It was something about drugs, prostitution, guns and leprosy... I wasn't really paying attention. Some of the photos in evidence (mainly the ones concerning the dissected howler monkeys) were not meant to be seen right after a big lunch. And back then they didn't even pay you for your time! Fifty bucks! DAMMIT!! He's been promising me a paycheck for half a year now claiming he was short on funds. The only thing that makes me feel better is the fact that I don't really edit his articles. Or go to the EXAMINER Homepage